Drawing Circus: Petty and Leyendecker

On Tuesday night I went along to Jake Spicer's regular Draw session at the Old Market in Brighton.
Emma Sandham-King chose the theme this time which was the advertising and pin-up work of George Petty and J C Leyendeker (who is one of my all time faves). It was quieter than usual which meant that you could get a seat and I spent most of an enjoyable evening sitting next to my mate and fellow cartoonist, the fabulously talented Geo Parkin. We were mainly sketching Beth, a new model to me, who has the longest legs since I last looked at mine in a funny mirror at the fair. Here are my best
attempts at capturing Beth along with a couple of lovely Emma.

Drawing Circus

My first life drawing session back in Brighton after a 2 month stay in Majorca was down at The Old Market where Jake and the girls put on another intriguing event. The 4 girl models struck a mix of nude and dressed poses with a variety of times from 3 minute poses to Mary's heroic 45 minute standing pose that my fellow cartoonist Geo Parkin manage to do justice to. I was working exclusively on my iPad using the fabulous drawing app Adobe Ideas. Here are my efforts. Pip pip!

Good Old Egon

Just over 2 months ago before I left Blighty for the Med and a life of bibulous bucolicity in Majorca, I attended one of Jake's art events at The Old Market. The theme was Egon Schiele who is probably my favourite artist, certainly my favourite drawer so I went along. The following morning I was in such a flap packing everything I thought I'd need to work out there that I didn't have time to post my best efforts so here they are. It's impossible to do justice to the great man but us mere mortals can but try!

Eleanor in the land of pink and grey

In Tuesday night's session at The Sussex County Arts Club a packed to capacity (26) crowd, including such eminent luminaries of the illustration world as Geo Parkin, Mark Harrison, Jeremy Radvan and of course, Bill Donohoe our gracious host and perveyor of cool toons to the artisans, tried to capture the lovely likeness of our model for the evening Eleanor. Here are my best scribblings.

Michaela

Last Tuesday night at SCAC here in Brighton we were treated to a drawing session with the fabulous Michaela.
Here are my best efforts from the night.

Amy

At last night's drawing session at the Sussex County Arts Club a full class (despite the God-awful weather) gathered to draw the lovely Amy who plays cello in A band with Lucy and Laura. Talented girls all! Here are me best scribblings.

Roller Derby Girls

Last night Jake Spicer's Draw group hosted another event at The Old Market. Emma Sandham-King was the host model this time and she presented us with her Roller Derby team kitted out in their tough
looking sports gear. Considering the fact that none of them, apart from Emma had modelled before, they were amazing and great fun to draw. I was working on my iPad for a change as I'd already had a private session with the wonderful Jasmine that afternoon using pencil and watercolour (I'll post these up later) so I fancied a change of technique. I was using my favourite art app for the iPad- Artrage and discovered a trap to avoid when using a digital app for drawing. If you zoom in to the image to draw a more detailed head after already drawing the body it's very easy to get the scale wrong as you can see fro the middle right image where the girls have enormous heads. I didn't have time to go back and do the heads again but I'll watch out for that in future. Still learning!

Shadey ladies

I've been asked to join about a dozen other artists in an exhibition of life drawings to appear in Worthing in March and to that end I wanted to try out a new unified style instead of my usual eclectic mish-mash. I've recently seen two artists' work that has inspired me. Russell Patterson, and american illustrator from the 20s and 30s used a lot of areas of black in his images and modern artist Steve Huston does fabulous work with charcoal. So I decided to try my hand at monochrome images in watercolour and charcoal and these are what I've come up with so far. I'm quite pleased with the way it's looking and the large dark shadows are meant to symbolise the oppressive dark side of our personality or the emotional baggage that we carry around and the naked figure stands for vulnerabilty.
I'm hoping to create some sort of emotional response in the viewer rather than just creating pretty pictures of naked people. I don't think I'm quite there yet but I'm going to keep going and see where it leads me.

Lichtenstein themed session

Last Tuesday night Jake Spicer's Draw group held a Roy Lichtenstein inspired life drawing event at The Old Market in Brighton and Hove. As usual it was well attended and there were three tableaux design and built by Laura and three models in suitable pop art costume and make-up to pose in front of them. I seemed to spend most of the evening drawing the magnificent Laura Nenonen who was throwing some suitably cartoony shapes. Great fun! Next month the theme is Norse mythology so get yer helmets out gang!

Jasmine and Michaela

This week on two consecutive nights I was lucky enough to draw two models who were new to me and they were both fabulous. On the Monday night at Kate Shields' private session in her lovely flat overlooking Brighton sea front our model was the truly beautiful Jasmine whom Kate had met at Glastonbury. A small group of artists attempted to capture her loveliness on paper.
On the following night at the SCAC session we had another new model Michaela who was also
fantastic to draw as I hope you'll see from my scribblings. I'm off back to Palma next week where I have yet to find a drawing session so it was great to draw these two wonderful models before I go.

3 Models

I've managed to fit in three life drawings sessions since I got back from Majorca, two at SCAC on Tuesday nights and one on Sunday afternoon at Jake's studio in New England House. Here's a compilation of the best scribblings. The excellent models were Laura, Lucy and Chiara. I need to fit a few more in before returning to paradise island where I can find no classes. Alas!

Naomi

I've managed to fit  in an awful lot of life drawing since I got back from Mallorca where classes are as rare as a Mensa member in Magaluf. One of which was a private session with the extremely lovely Naomi Vernon who I've known vaguely for years through The New Venture Theatre group. She'd never posed  for an artist before and seemed to enjoy it so I'm hoping we can repeat the experience soon. Thanks Naomi!

Sarah Jane! and more Emma

Yesterday afternoon as the snow festooned the town, the fabulous Alexa Garside and I had a private drawing session with the stunningly beautiful Sarah Jane Gay. She reminds me of a young Kirsten Scott Thomas whose etherial

presence has graced many a film like The English Patient. SJ has just returned from 3 months in Madrid where she became much more fluent in Spanish than I'll ever be. Below are my best efforts and below them are drawings form the new (to me) life drawing session at the Farm Tavern on a Monday night where I drew the always excellent model Emma Sandham-King in the company of some talented and interesting gals including the frighteningly talented Manon Delacroix.